“Some people will tell you that because the oddsmakers aren’t expecting a new iPhone from Apple today, this Steve Jobs keynote isn’t a very big deal,” Jon Fortt reports for CNET.
“They’re wrong,” Fortt reports. “This is the most important Apple announcement in recent memory.”
Fortt reports, “iCloud, the service Apple promised to announce, represents more than an updated iTunes service for the era of modern data centers. It is probably Steve Jobs’s attempt to redefine the “Digital Hub” and finally succeed in an area where he has failed repeatedly: web services. If it works, Jobs will have proven he can go toe-to-toe with arch-rival Google on its home turf. If not, Jobs will have given the world a peek at Apple’s Achilles Heel.”
Read more in the full article here.
That’s BS we’ve seen Apple’s “achilles heel” more times than we can count. Their vulnerability is the nasty networks-like AT&T-that have mucked up cloud functionality.
3 years from now people will be saying “remember when we were tied to AT&T and the user experience sucked?”….
Christmas in June. Love it!
I would like to be surprised and impressed. I enjoy being Wowed. Why ruin it then? I’m not curious about all these advanced leaks, speculations and spoilers. I totally avoided reading Mr. Gruber’s piece on this upcoming event. I understand he, like many, felt the need for a few extra clicks. Time’s hard.
But there’s a chance, hopefully not, that this is the swan song of Stevenote. I liked how Apple took away as much of the silly distractions out of the way with the pre-announcement. I’m looking forward to this, for an updated/replacement version of the Digital Hub Strategy.
I don’t think it’s the umbilical cord free iPads from the PCs is what Mr. Jobs meant when he said PostPC era. I don’t think it’s the iClouds either. There will be trucks, but how is it they are trucks if we all need them as a spare? I don’t think I have a satisfactory answer to that question yet. Maybe this keynote will address that.
I agree in that with CNET, this has the signs to be one of the most important keynotes of his life. I’m looking forward to be wowed again.
Good post, krquet. I hope that you are wowed. And I hope that this is not the swan song of SJ. There is so much more to do…
Gruber didn’t spoil anything. The first sentence is laying out that he had no specific information to spill just “fourth-hand” impressions. I value his insights and his apparent self-knowledge.
I value Mr. Gruber’s insights as well, and consider myself a fan of his. Which is exactly why I singled him out, and avoided reading him before the presentation. He can be uncannily accurate.
I wanted the information/report first hand from Mr. Jobs and his team. That experience coupled with the zen of presentation (“it’s an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator…”) is preferable to me. You may have a different view, and I respect that.
Then why diss’ him with a throw away comment like …”felt the need for a few extra clicks. Time’s hard.”
Daring Fireball’s Raison d’être is to speculate, reflect and philosophise.
I’ll drink to that :o)
Just to be clear, at 10am PDT, we’re all going to look directly into the eye of God and realize that man has evolved to become one via Steve Jobs.
Or…
Maybe it’s just Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud.
My take:
Apple is building from the user into the cloud.
Google is weakly building from the cloud to the user.
The approach that provides the best user experience will eventually dominate, methinks.
Best user experience & Google = does not compute. Input failure. Houston, we have a problem.
Steve & Co just utterly nailed it. Apple stuff is exciting, fun, works, seamless, amazingly powerful, and easy. So much exciting new stuff. Apple has everybody else beat by such a long shot it’s planets away.
This is a CNBC article, not CNET…